After the dust settled yesterday, I got to thinking. Here are two very good players (not superstars, mind you) with enormous contacts. It seems the salary cap increases every year, which gives teams more and more money to dump into inflated contracts. In the future, will so-so players be making undeserved millions? In the near future, I can see a strong push by owners to eliminate hitting in the game because of their major investments. In turn, every "back in my day" sportscaster will say the game has gotten soft and the penalties are unwarranted. This will make for an even larger demand for skilled finesse Europeans into the league.

Just some thoughts. I would like to hear some of your opinions.

The dust may be settling on the UFA frenzy but it's just beginning on the CBA front. What's really going to be fun is listening to the owners ***** & moan about rising expenses due to players salaries while they completely ignore the fact that they're the ones who are handing out $5m+ contracts to the likes of Denis Widemans & Matt Carles and dropping $24-26m in salary & bonus each to Suter & Parise over a 12 month period.

Absolute nonsense. The guys on 97.1 generally have no clue what they're talking about, especially when it comes to hockey. Terry Foster repeatedly caled Suter Sutter the other day. He sounds like a complete moron when he tries to talk sports period, let alone hockey.

I'm pretty sure I saw an NHL player poll last year that asked players which coaches they would most like to play for and Babcock was either second or third (I think second).

These guys wanted to go home, simple as that. Not much the Wings could do outside of offer more money, which would have been stupid (they're both already grossly overpaid IMO).

That was a poll done by the CBC with the NHLPA. Bylsma was first with 21%. Babs was 2nd with 18%:

In 10 years, the Wings brass will be glad they didn't sign Suter and Parise

So let's see, the Wild have been in existence for 11 years & have made the playoffs all of 3 times. I'm throwing it out there right now, even with adding Suter & Parise to the mix, they'll see less playoff appearances in the next 10 years than the Wings.

The Wings front office is still pretty much the best damn one in the business regardless of what happened today. Kenny pretty much said it himself that they, and every other team making offers really, were not in a position to complete for those two based on them already making up their minds that they wanted to go "home" to play. Reading some of the coverage from down in Nashville, I find it revealing that David Poile all but flat out called Suter a liar in his comments, mentioning that Suter had told him that he would circle back to the Preds to let them counter offer before all was said & done. Personally, I think that the dog & pony show that played out over the last few days was all about Suter & Parise already being 99% sure they were signing with Minny unless someone came in WELL over the top with an offer, like max money i.e. $14m a year, and while it stings not getting either one today, I think in the long run I'll be glad the Wings didn't bite.

Former Red Wing Kirk Maltby has just shot down a corporate jet over Lake Michigan registered out of the greater Pittsburg area with a Russian military-spec shoulder fired rocket launcher. Ecklund reports that he's not sure what surprises him more; the incident or the fact that Maltby actually hit his target.

I'm not surprised that Malts would hit his target. He was a 50 goal scorer in juniors after all...

Doubt Holland would make a move like that, and doubt he will be traded. They will either find a way to sign Parise and keep Kovalchuk or Parise will sign elsewhere. The only way I would consider doing this trade if he infact is up for grabs is if we could commit highway robbery. Some ridiculous offer that we just couldn't say no too.

Highway robbery? Maybe something like the rights to Hudler, all the $1 hotdogs you can carry, & Karen Newman's home phone number? Get 'r done Kenny!

Something the Wings don't have is that guy that other teams & other teams fans just loathe. A guy that gets under your skin even before he steps on the ice. I wouldn't mind having Ott as that guy on the Wings at all if the price were right. They could use someone that will get the other team off their game again...like a douchier/edgier Maltby like I said before.

would anyone here be interested? and if so what would be the cost? ... id personally think if we'd be able to add ott and like prust to the bottom 6 it would give us something we been lacking for years, it all depends on the price obviously as moen is also a ufa

Kind of a much douchier/edgier version of Maltby imo. If the price were right, sure. I just wonder if he was a 50 goal scorer in juniors.

I'm not sure whats more sad, that this mash-up of the 2 worst run franchises in the league is more than 8 million over the 70.3 million dollar salary cap, Or the fact that I took the time to put it into cap geeks cap calculator.

The saddest thing is that the combined roster would probably still end up missing the playoffs.